The Tropical Rainforest - Lesson 10

Manna moment:

Let us steward the creation that the Lord has given us well.

Genesis 1:28-30- "And God blessed them.  And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.  And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit.  You shall have them for food.  And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food."  And it was so."

This occurred on the sixth day of creation.  God had finished placing everything in order and creating all the land, vegetation, fish, animals, and us.  After making all of it, He places Adam in charge to have dominion.  We have a great responsibility to care for that which the Lord God has created.  

Has anyone ever given you a masterpiece?  If someone hand made something for you and gave it to you, you would want to take care of it well.  We need to take good care of God's creation too.

Vocabulary Review

Since it just turned chilly for us in Texas, I placed vocabulary words around the room for the students to find as I called out the definitions of the words.  The activity should warm them up well.

Regions of the WOrld : Forests

I never have adequate time during class to do ALL the things I want to, to relish in the activities, and so these Regions of the World would be an awesome, small, short, and simple way to review some geography and ecology at the same time.  My suggestion is to color the Boreal Forest blue, the Temperate Forest orange, and the Tropical Rain Forest Green.  Then, I would point out the Tropic of Cancer and trace that line Red and point out the Tropic of Capricorn and trace that line Orange.

Since my class in our Route 104 Airstream is smaller, I attempted to have the students color the forests with different colors.  They began with outlining and then colored it in accordingly.

---

Read Aloud- The Great Kapok Tree

The aspect of this book that I like the best is that a good choice was made at the end.  This book shows the interconnectedness of a biome and reminds us that every living organism on the planet is connected and has relationship with other living organisms.  It's like there is a Creator God who is always in relationship creating a world that thrives through relationships.  Consequently, we are to be the best stewards of the most awesome creation in the universe.

We made a listening guide to go along with this book to review the key science concepts.  Check it out here.

---

RainForest Foldable

To reinforce the layers of the forest and learn that the rainforest has an extra layer called the Emergent layer, we made these sweet foldables with layers.  The students can color them, there is information already written under each fold about the layer of the forest along with a word to trace.  There are pictures of an animals that belongs in each layer of the rainforest as well.  This is a great way to learn about the fauna that lives in the layers of the rainforest.

---

Tropical Rainforest Biome Sheet

Bringing it all together, here are some key characteristics of the Tropical Rainforest:
Average Temperature:  70-85 degrees Fahrenheit
Rainfall:  80-400 inches a year
Most fauna are arboreal or live in the trees of the rainforest.
Common flora are pineapples, bananas, cocoa, lemons, balsa, and mahogany trees
Common fauna are spider monkeys, tree frogs, lizards, lemurs, boa constrictors, and toucans.

Energy Transfer Game

We played this game during class when we were learning about food chains and webs.  Because we have a focus on conservation for this lesson, I decided to have less producers for this game to see how it faired.  See for yourself.

---

One student was eaten and laid down to relax from the game.  The Omnivore next to the Producer won the game.  She was the last one standing

jumping through the layers of the forest

I brought my agility ladder and had the students all jump through the layers of the forest naming each one as they went.  In this way, it is best to be last because you would have heard the layers of the forest ten times before you had to know the layers yourself.